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Social Change Visiting Scholars

The Mercatus Center is home to some of the most innovative work currently taking place on social, economic, and institutional change. This, combined with our close proximity to Washington, DC and our commitment to make our research relevant to policy makers offers a unique opportunity for leading scholars to participate in the Mercatus Center Visiting Scholars Program.

Leading institutional specialists from the academy spend up to one month at the Mercatus Center interacting with Mercatus and George Mason Scholars, bringing their ideas to policy makers in Congress and the Administration through Mercatus’ suite of programs, and taking time to further their own work in an intellectually stimulating environment.

The Mercatus Center provides housing, honorarium, an office, and extensive opportunities to contribute to both the scholarly and policy conversation within the scholars area of expertise.

2008 Visiting Scholars

David  Schmidtz is the Kendrick Professor of Philosophy and joint Professor of Economics at the University of Arizona and has written on topics such as the limits of government, individual responsibility and moral theory, and, most recently, on the elements of justice. Dr. Schmidtz holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Arizona.

Robert Nelson, Mercatus Affiliated Senior Scholar and professor of public policy at the University of Maryland. Professor Nelson’s research focuses on a wide variety of topics from the economics of religion, to work on private neighborhoods and local government. He served as a Mercatus visiting scholar in the fall of 2007 and will continue in this capacity during spring semester.

Jared Rubin joins the Mercatus Center in 2008 as a post-doctoral fellow. Dr. Rubin is an Assistant Professor of Economics at California State University, Fullerton. His work focuses on economic history, applied microeconomic theory, and the economics of religion. He holds a BA from the University of Virginia and a PhD from Stanford University.

Paul Lewis is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at Kings College London. His research interests include: the Austrian school of economics; applied microeconomics (in particular, the economics of quasi-markets, performance-related pay, and apprenticeship); training in the retail sector; the political economy of the public services; and the history and methodology of economics. Professor Lewis was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and Christ Church, Oxford.

2007 Visiting Scholars

Andrew Morriss is a senior scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University as well as Galen J. Roush Professor of Business Law & Regulation and co-director of the Center for Business Law & Regulation at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, Cleveland, OH.

William Easterly is a professor of economics at New York University and the co-director of the Development Research Institute.  Dr. Easterly's areas of economic expertise are the determinants of long-run economic growth and the effectiveness of foreign aid. He has worked in most areas of the developing world, particularly Africa, Latin America, and Russia. In addition, he is an associate editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Economic Growth, and the Journal of Development Economics.

Dr. Easterly is teaching a course at George Mason University in the Spring of 2007. Econ 896-007 wil be on February 16, 19, 23, Mar 2, and 20, 23.  For More information contact Prof. Philip R. Wiest at pwiest@gmu.edu.

Svetozar Pejovich joined Mercatus in fall 2007 as a visiting scholar. Professor Pejovich is an emeritus professor of economics at Texas A&M University, where he was professor for over twenty years. During his four decade career in economics Professor Pejovich held positions at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, Ohio State University, and  Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala.

2006 Visiting Scholars

Saras D. Sarasvathy is an associate professor of business administration at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business where she teaches classes on entrepreneurship and ethics. During her time as a visiting scholar, she presented her research on the role financial markets and entrepreneurship play in social transformation to the academic community at George Mason University and the policy community on capitol hill.

Christopher Coyne is an assistant professor of economics at Hampden-Sydney College and a research fellow at the Mercatus Center where he is working with the Social Change Project. During the summer of 2006, he used his time as a visiting scholar to complete his manuscript, After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy.

Sanford Ikeda is an associate professor of economics at the State University of New York (SUNY) Purchase School of Natural and Social Sciences. Among his publications is "The Dynamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism" (1997). His current research on the political economy of cities examines the impact of various forms of government intervention on spontaneous urban processes. Sandy received his Ph.D. in economics from New York University where he studied with Israel Kirzner, Mario Rizzo, Fritz Machlup, and Ludwig Lachmann. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Ikeda has since 1980 been deeply involved, as a composer and performer, in the Japanese percussion art form known as taiko. Dr. Ikeda visited for the Spring 2006 semester and taught a graduate class on the political economy of cities. He is also assisting Mercatus on our new project, Crisis and Response in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Barry Weingast is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution as well as the Ward C. Krebs Family Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University; he served as chair of that department from 1996 to 2001. Weingast is an expert in political economy and public policy, the political foundation of markets and economic reform, U.S. politics, and regulation. His current research focuses on the political determinants of public policymaking and the political foundations of markets and democracy. Weingast is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the Heinz Eulau Award for Best Paper from the American Political Science Review in 1987. With Charles Stewart, he received the Award for Best Paper in Political History by the American Political Science Association in 1994 and again in 1998. Weingast earned a Ph.D. in economics from the California Institute of Technology in 1978. Dr. Weingast will be visiting in March 2006.

2005 Visiting Scholars

Emily Chamlee-Wright is the associate professor of economics at Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin. Dr. Chamlee-Wright’s research interests include development economics and cultural economics. She writes and teaches about indigenous markets in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her first book, The Cultural Foundations of Economic Development (Routledge 1997) was based on ethnographic research she conducted in the urban markets of Ghana. Her more recent ethnographic work is a study of urban market women in Zimbabwe, documenting their strategies for economic survival and accumulation.

Bryce Wilkinson is the director and founder of Capital Economics, a consulting firm in Wellington, New Zealand. Prior to founding Capital Economics, Bryce was a director and shareholder at First NZ Capital and the head of advisory unit and director at CS First Boston. Dr. Wilkinson will be visiting from May 9-13, 2005.

2004 Visiting Scholars

Chris Mantzavinos, is a senior fellow at the Max Planck Project Group in Bonn and privatdozent in economics at the University of Bayreuth

Geoffrey Demarest is the Iberoamerica researcher at the US Army's Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) located at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. His areas of academic interest include emerging threats and responses, strategic alignments, security and property, and military history. Dr. Demarest was a Social Change Visiting Scholar during August 2004.

Benito Arrunada is a professor of business organization at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), where he does empirical research into organizations and institutions. Dr. Arrunada was visiting in November 2004.

2003 Visiting Scholars

John V.C. Nye, associate professor of economics and history at Washington University in St. Louis and co-founder of the International Society for the New Institutional Economics

Dragos Aligica, associate professor at the National School of Political Science and Public Administration, Bucharest

Joseph Sima, associate professor at the Prague School of Economics